With effect from 1 October 1985, the prize was awarded annually, although some years there were no candidates. Regulations were altered in 1989 to permit one or two prizes at discretion in one year. It is also possible to co-write an essay, and to win the prize jointly.

You will find below a list of some of the previous winners. Those whose email addresses are offered are happy to be contacted if you have some questions about the prize. Copies of the essays can be consulted in the Manuscripts Room at Cambridge University Library. They should be ordered with the classmark “Gordon Duff” followed by their running number.

‘Cheapness of production and the valuable imitative faculty…the marvels of the present age’: Sir Henry Cole’s Interest in and Influence on Book binding design and production in the mid-nineteenth century.

11 Laura Sole

The Anglo-Saxon Office for St Cuthbert.

1995:

4 Mary Morrissey

A Layman’s reading of Religious controversies in the 1630s: A study of CUL MS Dd XIV. 25 9item 9, now item 3)

1992:

8 J.J. Greenland

The iconography of the Hunterian Psalter, Glasgow University Library, MS. Hunter 229

1991:

7 A.R. Atkins

A bibliographical analysis of the Manuscript of D.H. Lawrence’s “The White peacock”

1990:

6 K.A. Lowe

Latin versions of Old English Wills

1988:

9 Kathryn Lowe

The scribe of MS.CUL. Ff.2.33: How good a copist?

1967:

3 John Robert Harvey

The etchings by H.K. Browne (“phiz”) for Dickens’ s novels.

1958:

2 S.A. Skilliter

New light on Barton’s services for the levant company, a study of Additional Manuscript 461 preserved in Cambridge University Library, submitted as an essay for the Gordon Duff Prize, 1958.

1955:

1 R. Vaughan

The handwriting of Matthew Paris (reprinted in Transcription of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society Vol. 1 part 5 pp. 376-394, P850.b.55.1).

Key Dates

Candidates must submit a title and brief abstract of proposed subjects to Dr Jill Whitelock, Head of Special Collections, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (jw330@cam.ac.uk) so as to reach her not later than last day of the Michaelmas Term, 19 December 2018 (email preferred).

Candidates will be informed whether their proposed subjects are approved by the Library Syndicate after its meeting on 26 February 2019.

If the proposed subject is approved, essays must be sent in hard-copy and electronic form to Dr Jill Whitelock, Head of Special Collections, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, CB3 9DR (jw330@cam.ac.uk) by 25 March 2019.